put twenty gold guineas (a guinea was worth slightly more than a pound, having twenty-one shillings to it rather than twenty), a phial of vinaigrette, her five favourite Argus letters, a coin purse for change, and a handkerchief.
In the handbags, carefully folded, went two black dresses shorn of frills and furbelows, camisoles, plain petticoats, nightgowns, under-drawers, one spare black cap, two spare pairs of thick woollen stockings, garters, handkerchiefs, rags for her menstrual courses, a spare pair of black gloves, and a mending kit. Each garment was as sparing in volume as she could make it. After some thought, she put a pair of bedroom slippers enclosed in a bag on top of her nightgowns in case the floor of her room should be cold or dirty. For reading she carried the works of William Shakespeare and the
She wore her third black dress, over which she was supposed to wear a cloak, but, despising cloaks as clumsy and inefficient, she had made herself a greatcoat like a man’s. It buttoned down the front, came up to her neck, and down to her knees and wrists. Her bonnet was home-made too; even Hertford’s milliners displayed nothing half so hideous in their windows. It had a small front peak that would not get in her or anybody else’s way, and a spacious crown under which both cap and hair would fit comfortably. Firmly tied beneath her chin with stout ribbons, it would never blow off. On her feet she wore her only footwear, a pair of laced ankle boots with flat heels and no style whatsoever.
The reticule, she discovered as she waited at the Blue Boar for the northbound coach to arrive, was very heavy-who would ever have believed that nineteen gold guineas could weigh so much? She had drawn twenty from the bank yesterday, but tendered the twentieth at the stage-coach agency for a ticket in stages as far as Grantham. It indicated that she would break her journey at Biggleswade, Huntingdon, Stamford and, finally, Grantham. There she would have to buy another ticket, as she intended to leave the Great North Road.
The huge conveyance lumbered up at noon, its four light draught horses steaming, its cheap seats on the box and roof so full that the coachman refused to take more outside passengers. While the team was being changed Mary tendered her ticket to Biggleswade, only to be roundly sworn at; she was not on his passenger list.
“You go only as far as Stevenage,” he growled angrily when she insisted that he honour her reservation. “There be a race meeting at Doncaster.”
What this had to do with coaches to Grantham Mary did not know (or indeed, why gentlemen would wish to travel so far just to see horses race), but she resigned herself to alighting in Stevenage. In her youth she vaguely remembered that her elder sisters had occasionally travelled by stage or Mail coach, but such had never been her own lot. Nor, she knew from that time, did Jane or Elizabeth take a maid, though sometimes Uncle Gardiner gave them a manservant to guard them while they were on the Mail. Therefore she could see no impropriety in her own unaccompanied journey; she was, after all, quite an elderly spinster, not a beautiful young girl like Jane or Elizabeth at that time.
When she climbed into the coach cabin she discovered that the coachman had jammed four people on either seat, and that the two elderly gentlemen who flanked her were not chivalrous. They glared at her and refused to make room, but in Mary Bennet they mistook their mark. Neither timid nor afraid, she gave a determined thrust with her bottom that succeeded in driving a wedge between them. Braced as if in a very tight gibbet, she sat bolt upright and stared into the faces of the four passengers opposite. Unfortunately she was facing backward, which made her feel slightly sick, and it was only after some frantic searching that her eyes found a focus-a row of nails on the ceiling. How awful to be crammed cheek by jowl with seven strangers! Especially since not one of them bore a friendly expression or was given to talk. I shall die before I get as far as Stevenage! she thought, then stuck out her chin and settled to the business. I can do anything, anything at all!
Though the windows were let down, nothing short of a gale would dispel the sour stench of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes. In her fantasies she had gazed with delight out of the windows at the passing countryside, greedy to devour its beauties; now she found that impossible, between the swelling corporations of the gentlemen on either side of her, a huge box on the lap of the dame in the right opposite window, and an equally large parcel on the lap of the youth in the left opposite window. When someone did speak, it was to demand that the windows be shut-no, no,
Three hours after leaving the Blue Boar, the coach pulled up in Stevenage. Not anything like as large as Hertford! Knees weak, head aching, Mary was liberated outside the best inn, but upon enquiry was directed to a smaller, meaner establishment half a mile away. A bag in either hand, she commenced to walk before she realised that she should first have ascertained the time of tomorrow’s north-bound coach. The sun was still well up; best turn around and do that now.
Finally she put her bags down on the floor of a little room in the Pig and Whistle; only then could she avail herself of something that had lurked in her mind for half the journey. Oh, thank God! There was a chamber pot underneath her bed. No need to traipse to an outhouse. Like all women, Mary knew better than to drink copious beverages while she travelled. Even so, iron control was necessary.
Not perhaps the most auspicious start, she reflected as she poked at greasy stew in a secluded corner of the taproom; the inn had no coffee room and no trays were available. Only her most forbidding expression had kept several tipsy drinkers at bay; not really very hungry, she ate what she could and went to her room, there to find that the Pig and Whistle did not close its taproom doors until well into the early hours. What a day to commence a journey! A Saturday.
The stage-coach she boarded at seven in the morning took her as far as Biggleswade, where a party with influence at the coach company in London had booked all its seats onward. The coachman kept his cabin passengers to three on either seat and the noon stop was an hour, time to drink a cup of scalding coffee, use the stinking outhouse, and stretch the legs. The woman in the left opposite corner talked incessantly, which Mary could have borne better had she not found herself the object of remorseless questions-who was she, where was she going, who had died to plunge her into mourning, what a lot of nonsense, to be investigating the plight of the poor! The only way Mary could stem the tide was to pretend to have a fit consisting of jerks and yammers. After that, she sat in peace. The Biggleswade inn was more bearable too, though she had to be up at five to board the stage to Huntingdon, then waited over an hour for it.
She was miles east of where she wanted to be, but knew that she would have to get to Grantham and a coach depot before she could turn west. Her first two days she had spent in the middle of the backward facing seat, but to her joy she was now luckier; she got a window seat facing forward. To be able to gaze out at the countryside was wonderful. The landscape was lovely, flat fields green with crops, coppices, snatches of forest that the coach trundled through in merciful shade; for May the weather was very warm, every day thus far a fine one. As they passed through an occasional village the children spilled out cheering and waving, apparently never tired of seeing the monstrous vehicle and its labouring horses. Labour the horses did; jammed with passengers, local mail and parcels, freight and luggage, the coach was immensely heavy.
The roads were shocking, but no one travelling them ever expected any other state. A coachman tried to avoid the worst of the potholes, but grinding along in the ruts was inevitable. Twice they passed carriages tipped into the ditch, and once some fellow in a many-caped greatcoat almost sent them into the ditch as he thundered past in a curricle drawn by four matched greys, grazing the wheel hubs and setting the coachman to cursing. Local carts, wagons and gigs were a nuisance until their drivers realised that if they did not get off the road in a hurry, they would be turned into kindling.
Those with the money to purchase a ticket on the stage-coach were not poor, though some were close to it. Mary’s seat companion was a mere child going to governess two children near Peterborough; as she looked into that sweet face, Mary suppressed a shudder. For she knew as clearly as if she were a Gypsy peering into a crystal ball that the two children would prove incorrigible. To hire this child said that the Peterborough parents had devoured many governesses. The woman of midage opposite was a cook going to a new position, but she was sliding down the ladder, not moving up it; her rambling conversation betrayed a fondness for the bottle and unclever fraud. How amazing! thought Mary as the miles ground by. I am learning about people at last, and suddenly I realise that my servants in Hertford cheated me, rightly deeming me an ignoramus. I may not yet have encountered any poor, but I am certainly receiving an education. In all my life, I have never before been inescapably exposed to strangers.
The poor walked from place to place, and there were many of them along the road to Huntingdon. A few carried a cloth in which were knotted bread and cheese; some swigged at bottles of gin or rum; but most, it
